Free Republic

In the fight against the spread of Covid-19, a big dividing line in our country today is whether to wear a face mask or not. It also seems to have political connotations. For example, for Memorial Day remembrances, former Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill wore masks. In contrast, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump paid their respects without masks. In many cities and states across the nation, the number of Covid-19 cases are going down, yet the masking requirements are becoming more stringent. In portions of 39 states, there are mandatory mask regulations. In New...

It would be one thing if a famous pastor renounced his faith or if a greatly loved worship leader said she no longer believed. I could understand why this would be big news, and I could understand why the secular media would pick up on it. But why is it big news when the son of a pastor and the frontman for a not-super-famous Christian rock group renounces his faith? Could it be that the world would rather celebrate unbelief than faith? As I tweeted on May 27, “I was saddened to hear the news about the frontman of a...

I'm not going to say, "At least one positive thing has come out of the coronavirus pandemic." Because there's nothing positive to say about a tragic, deadly health crisis and economic catastrophe like this. There is no "bright side." But we did learn something important. Obama lied. Again. Barack Obama was the biggest liar in the history of the U.S. presidency. First, he lied about transparency. His administration was the most corrupt and secretive in history. See Hillary Clinton's 33,000 deleted emails. See Anthony Weiner's laptop. See the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to spy on Donald Trump and his...

Remember this week when it comes time to vote in November. What we’re seeing across America is what Democrats have created coming to fruition; it’s the natural end result of a progressive philosophy that works overtime to absolve individuals of their responsibility and place blame on others for political advantage. It’s rage for the sake of motivation to vote, to hate, to not think. It has worked for progressives in the past, and there’s no reason to believe it won’t work for Democrats now. But in order to work, it has to destroy. Liberalism, progressivism, or whatever they choose to...

I feel terribly sorry for the hundred thousand Americans who've lost their lives to the coronavirus. I also feel sorry for all the small business owners in the country who have become innocent victims of the government's mishandled war on COVID-19. They worked long and hard to start up their local restaurants, coffee shops, clothing stores, hair salons, health spas, book stores and pet grooming shops. But in just three months their livelihoods - and the livelihoods of millions of their employees - were destroyed by the unnecessarily severe shutdown of most of our booming national economy. An MSNBC business...

MADISON — The next time liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Dallet stands up for lockdowns, perhaps she should avoid cruising in a packed boat on Big Cedar Lake.  As reported by NewsTalk 1130 WISN’s Dan O’Donnell, Dallet is pictured in sunglasses enjoying a sunny Memorial Day Weekend boat ride — an excursion that still would have been illegal under the Evers administration’s statewide Safer at Home order that Dallet has defended. That lockdown was not set to expire until a day after Memorial Day, and very well may have been extended by Gov. Tony Evers’ power-grabbing health department chief had the...

Author's Note: I use “Red China” and “Communist China” to make sure that criticism falls squarely on the evils of the government, not the proud and good people of China or their millennia old history. As of January of this year, large segments of the so-called People’s Republic of China seemed poised to upend the authoritarian state that had ruled over the country since just after the Second World War. Hong Kong protestors defied totalitarian Red China’s efforts to further roll back rights and privileges agreed to when they assumed control from Britain. Then came the virus and a series...

https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Screen-Shot-2020-05-29-at-4.53.59-PM-998x687.png President Donald Trump announced Friday that he has directed his administration to “begin the process of eliminating policy exemptions that give Hong Kong different and special treatment.” His announcement came a day after China’s People’s Congress passed Beijing’s controversial new national security law related to Hong Kong. Trump’s announcement will profoundly affect the future of Hong Kong and the U.S.-China relationship.The president’s decision was based on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s certification to Congress Wednesday that “Hong Kong is no longer autonomous from China,” a decision he said gave him no pleasure but that “sound policy-making requires a recognition...

The debate about whether social media companies should have protection from liability misses a larger question about their role in American society. There’s nothing like a row between Twitter and President Trump to turn everyone into an expert on 47 U.S. Code § 230, a heretofore obscure section of federal law that deals with liability protections for companies like Twitter.Go on social media right now and you’re bound to find friends, neighbors, and colleagues opining on federal statutes and citing old Supreme Court cases to bolster their arguments that we have to do this or that right now to save the...

Skepticism is at the heart of the scientific method. Question everything. Test everything. Scientific knowledge is established by evidence, not authority. The method is sound, but the execution may be imperfect. That's why I have faith in the methods of science but not necessarily in scientists. Experts in science have a store of credibility that can be maintained only by their performance. I have a great deal of trust in the meteorologists at the National Weather Service because their forecasts are 80%–90% accurate (no weatherman jokes, please — I used to be one!). But if most of their predictions began...

I took hydroxychloroquine for two years. A long time ago as a visiting cancer surgeon in Asia, in Thailand, Nepal, India, and Bangladesh. From 1987 to 1990. Malaria is rife there. I took it for prophylaxis, 400 milligrams once a week for two years. Never had any trouble. It was inexpensive and effective. I started it two weeks before and was supposed to continue it through my stay and four weeks after returning. But I stopped it after two years. I was worried about potential side effects of which there are many, as with all drugs right down to Tylenol...

Not all American taxpayers agree with the reasoning behind President Trump’s decision to freeze U.S. funding of the World Health Organization – that WHO’s overly deferential treatment of China’s communist government has resulted in global COVID-19 tragedy – but there are other excellent reasons to applaud the president’s action. One is the fact that U.S. taxpayer dollars will no longer bankroll WHO’s partner organizations like the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) and scandal-plaguedInternational Planned Parenthood (IPPF).  These two NGO’s (non-government organizations) cloak themselves in the language of altruism and concern for the poor, but function as a new and condescending form...

We’ve been down this road before: Washington seems to agree broadly on legislation to revamp the nation’s infrastructure, only to get hung up on pesky details. An example was the recent exchange between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Peter DeFazio (D-OR). McConnell reiterated his reservations – already in clear view after President Trump called for a $2 trillion package last month – about huge deficit-financed federal spending on infrastructure. DeFazio responded by doubling down on a “massive investment” in public works “[j]ust like the New Deal of the 1930s”. Unfortunately, there is...

“We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” The infamous Vietnam era quotation may or may not have been uttered by an anonymous US Army major. It may have been misquoted, revised, apocryphal or invented. But it quickly morphed into an anti-war mantra that reflected the frustrations many felt. For Virginians and others forced to travel the “clean, green, renewable, sustainable” energy path, it will redound in modern politics as “We had to destroy the environment in order to save it.” For example, weeks after Governor Ralph Northam signed a “Clean Economy Act” that had been rushed...

“Cuba Dreading Trump Re-election, says Diplomat;” reads an AFP headline this week. “The re-election of Donald Trump as president of the United States would be "the worst" scenario for Cuba, Havana's top diplomat in charge of relations with Washington told AFP. "If the Republicans win ... it's a very negative scenario," said Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, the foreign ministry's general director for the US. "It would mean at least a continuation of the policy of aggression against our country." Let’s translate “policy of aggression,” as used in Castroite parlance (which is often parroted word for word by the Democrat/Fake News...

What happened to George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman recently cannot be explained away by emotions, feelings, nor necessity. It is a flagrant and careless violation of the basic code of all policemen to protect and serve. I don’t believe that placing one’s knee on the neck of an already subdued man can be found in any police training manual anywhere. Also culpable are the other policemen who stood by without putting an end to the obvious deadly overuse of force. A scary parallel is the case of Eric Garner, who died as the result of a...

America faces a contagious infection: partisanship. Consider the responses to a poll question about treating the COVID-19 virus with the long-approved and widely used drug hydroxychloroquine. A Morning Consult poll shows 52% of Republicans supporting the drug and 16% against. At the same time and in the same country, 56% of Democrats opposed it, and 13% were in favor. You can be reasonably sure that 99% of these respondents had never heard of COVID-19 and/or hydroxychloroquine on New Year's Day 2020. Their opinions are obviously responses to President Donald Trump's statements that the drug might be useful in treating the...

Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is a master of prevarication and deflection. He holds an M.S. in BS and a Ph.D. in vacuous excuses. He’s a professor emeritus of duplicity and deception. As a prodigious suck-up, he’s the Eddie Haskell of lawyers. We can expect Rosenstein’s skill set to be on full display Wednesday when he finally and belatedly appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee as its first witness in an investigation into the origins and evolution of the fallacious Trump-Russia collusion probe. During his ignominious tenure at the Justice Department, Rosenstein was at the center of the Russia...

This past week, years-long tensions over the rather peculiar Twitter feed of the president of the United States reached a boiling point. President Donald Trump, of late, has been engaged in a rather sordid and baseless bit of social media mudslinging about popular cable host Joe Scarborough's purported involvement in the death of a congressional aide from many years ago. The colorful, off-the-cuff tweeting proclivities of Donald J. Trump have been under a microscope for years. Many expected those habits to change when then-private citizen Trump descended that golden escalator in Trump Tower to announce his presidential run; they did...

Last week, Florida narrowly dodged a mass casualty terror attack when the FBI arrested a convicted jihadist who had recently completed a prison sentence and used his new freedom to plot. The FBI’s May 23 arrest of Tampa resident and U.S. citizen Muhammed Momtaz Al-Azhari undoubtedly averted a terrible massacre, one he planned to model after the June 2016 Pulse Nightclub killing of 49 mostly gay patrons by his jihadist hero Omar Mateen. But blood that is spared, just as much as blood actually spilled, should be sufficient to finally push Congress and the White House to address the recidivism...